Climate Change Has Left Bolivia Crippled by Drought

Like many countries, Bolivia relies on its glaciers and large lakes to supply water during the lean, dry times. But as Bolivia has heated with the rest of the world, those key stores of frozen and liquid water have dwindled and dried up. Warming has turned the country’s second largest lake into a parched bed of hardening soil. This heat has made the country’s largest lake a shadow of its former expanse and depth. It has forced Bolivia’s glaciers into a full retreat up the tips of its northern mountains — reducing the key Chacaltaya glacier to naught. Multiple reservoirs are now bone-dry. And, for hundreds of thousands of people, the only source of drinking water is from trucked-in shipments.

As emergency relief tankers wind through the streets and neighborhoods of La Paz and El Alto, the government has established an emergency water cabinet. Plans to build a more resilient system have been laid. And foreign governments and companies have been asked for assistance. But Bolivia’s larger problem stems from droughts that have been made worse and worse by climate change. And it’s unclear whether new infrastructure to manage water can deal with a situation that increasingly removes the water altogether.

Dried out Lakes, Dwindling Glaciers

Over the years, worsening factors related to climate change have made Bolivia vulnerable to any dry period that may come along. The added effect of warming is that more rain has to fall to make up for the resulting increased rate of evaporation. Meanwhile, glacial retreat means that less water melts and flows into streams and lakes during these hot, dry periods. In the end, this combined water loss creates a situation of drought prevalence for the state. And when a dry period is set off by other climate features — as happened with the strong El Nino that occurred during 2014 to 2016 — droughts in Bolivia become considerably more intense.

(In this NASA satellite shot of northern Bolivia taken on November 6, 2016, we find very thin mountain snow and ice cover in upper center, a lake Titicaca that is both now very low and filled with sand bars at upper left, and a completely dried up lake Poopo at bottom-center. Bolivia relies on these three sources of water. One is gone, and two more have been greatly diminished. Scientists have found that global warming is melting Bolivia’s glaciers and has increased evaporation rates by as much as 200 percent near its key lakes. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)

By December, rains are expected to return and provide some relief for Bolivia. El Nino has faded and 2017 shouldn’t be as dry as 2015 or 2016. However, like many regions around the world, the Bolivian highlands are in a multi-year period of drought. And the over-riding factor causing these droughts is not the periodic El Nino, but the longer-term trend of warming that is melting Bolivia’s glaciers and increasing rates of evaporation across its lakes.

In context, the current drought emergency has taken place as global temperatures hit near 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than 1880s averages. Current and expected future burning of fossil fuels will continue to warm the Earth and add worsening drought stress to places like Bolivia. So this particular emergency water shortage is likely to be just one of many to come. And only an intense effort to reduce fossil fuel emissions can substantially slake the worsening situation for Bolivia and for numerous other drought-affected regions around the world.

DJ

Sao Paulo, Las Vegas, La Paz/Bolivia – lots of dodged bullets this time around, with rains coming (or assumed to be coming) just as the situation gets critical. Based on the trend, it’s hard to see how all those bullets will be dodged, next time around.

Not Bob, but Haiti has already failed, and while it´s not only about climate change, it is mostly because of environmental damage from the Antropocene. Just compare it to the neighboor, Republica Dominicana.

I don’t think it would be appropriate to ID a particular country as likely ‘first to fall.’ In my view, there are a number high risk regions for nearer term collapse pressure increases. Bolivia is certainly one of these hot spots. In my view, it’s also useful to pay attention to cities and not just countries. Climate change is a real risk to cities and it’s when you have multiple cities facing collapse pressure that countries tend to get into trouble.

Cate

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, also told the Sydney Morning Herald that slashing the NASA program “would be a shockingly stupid move that would deal a very severe blow to global research on environmental change across the world.”

bostonblorp

“The added effect of warming is that more rain has to fall to make up for the resulting increased rate of evaporation. ”

Underappreciated point. I’ve seen it first hand in the tropics. Green pastures will bake back into brown in no time with the withering heat. The global loss of topsoil compounds the problem as there’s less of a sponge to retain moisture.

Andy_in_SD

I´m very sorry to say that my country is receiving a lot of refugees from Bolivia… *badly*. Bolivians are the most exploited nationality in sweat-shops in Brasil, and though slave work is forbidden here, they´re often used as slaves, chained sometimes literally (I used to work in the same hall that the delegacy of immigration DELEMIG was. Seeing those poor people, often with deep gashes in their wrists was enough to inspire tears, and the ones that got to DELEMIG were the luck ones, the ones that had just been rescued from slavers).

Sometimes the chains are metaphorical, “debts” their “employers” say they own, and that they don´t known enough to repudiate. Today, four of those slaves, chained “metaphorically” (and the factory owners advocates are already jumping in that “metaphor excuse”) died in a fire in a fire that shouldn´t have happened, in a “factory” that shouldn´t be a factory:

Most “fast fashion” brands use Bolivian slave work, here in Brasil, and fighting against it seems like drying ice, as long as people ignore all consequences and keep buying from Zara, Gregory, C&A, Renner, Armani, Brooksfield, M. Officer, and such (all of those brands were found to be using slave work in Brasil. They do export some of that production to the USA.).

But most people reactions are more of the “If it isn´t kicking me, I won´t pay attention, unless there´s a tragic child photo, then I´ll cry a little, do nothing about, except maybe a Facebook post, and ignore it the next time I see something shiny in the webz” mood that seems to be the most common one, I known. And the only possible way to stop this would be if people refused to buy clothes made with slave work, no matter how “well-fitting”, “slimming” or “a bargain” they were.

Andy_in_SD

Do not feel responsible by yourself as a Brazilian, we are all responsible as us in the rich countries buy the output of those slave factories and are gleeful that we got a great price. We never stop, look at that price and think with the materials, shipping, labor, how much did that child earn in Bangladesh, or person in the sweat shop in Brazil.

We don’t seem to care, the main thing for us is to twitter tweet (or instagram) our great deal we got on our 700 dollar iphone while driving our leased BMW wearing 300 dollar designer sunglasses at the uber mall.

The main thing is that we never see the face of the child who worked on such luxuries.

Just like climate change is the responsibility of everyone who emits more than about 3t of CO2 per annum.

Refugees will swarm from developing countries being hit by mega droughts as they have no resilience to cope. This will get much worse but it is the trade off for things like cheap Olive Oil and Clothes and the ability to drive and use A/C and fly for holidays. ‘We’ve’ made our choice

I do feel responsible, Andy. AS T-rev mentioned, this is the way capitalism works for who are entitled, and I do realize how privileged I´ve been in the “birth lottery”, born in a mostly white educated middle class family, where fearing slavery was never a risk, almost an impossibility unless I did something fenomenally dumb (I was going to write only impossibility, then I remembered one youth rescued from an internationally-wanted prostitution slaver I´ve met on one mission in the airport. The boy, a 15 year old blond, blue-eyed, high-school student with an enginner dad and a chemist mom, rich enough to have a pure-blooded horse that he sold to pay for his airplane ticket and fake _ he believed it to be real _ visa to the USA, howled about how unjust it was that he wasn´t allowed to travel and that his parents had been notified about him trying to “travel abroad and live a better life” in the USA… That he was being scammed and trafficked never crossed his mind, and it was “impossible” that his travel buddy was a prostitution-slaver, because “only woman are trafficked to be prostituted, isn´t it?”)

Of course, worry has limits, but not worrying can be a bad thing too. There are things that people can do about slavery. First of those is acknowledging that it exists, and that something can be done about it. Second is being responsible for what we buy, actually researching and sourcing things carefully, paying a premium if needed to be sure no slave work has been used to make what one´s buying. For somethings, like the smartphone you mentioned, that´s nearly impossible (europeans may buy fairphones, but in the rest of the world, the least worst option is trying to avoid to buy as much as possible), for others, like clothing, it´s actually possible, just a bit inconvenient. There are sellers that don´t use slave work at all, but they normally need to be sourced locally, and, the biggest irony, they´ll not be the “cool” brands.

People need to feel responsible enough to make to this second step (and, if possible, a third, voting for politicians that fight slave work and helping NGOs that do that). The realization that many people simply don´t feel this way, and brush those troubles off is the part that´s impossible for an individual to change, the worry that needs to be let go for sanity, but is sometimes hard to.

In a better world, the cool brands would be the ones that don´t use slave work, and in an ideal world, there would be no slave work at all. Cimate change is going to steer the world even further from the ideal, as it creates refugees that will be easily exploited (and vilified… as if someone competent would really “lose his job” to a person that doesn´t speak the langage, has no contacts and doesn´t known the local social faux-pas).

Cate

Thank you, umbrios. There but for the grace of God go you or I. We all have a responsibility to do whatever we can to combat this terrible evil, and if that means not buying the cool jeans, so what? That’s the right thing to do.

I think the middle class is generally less secure than they have been throughout the middle and later 20th Century. The fact that Bolivians can be exploited as slave labor stands as stark warning to what can happen to persons within a collapsed state who don’t have resources to move and then open up avenues to support themselves in other countries.

Thanks for this testimony, Umbrios. It’s pretty chilling to me.

mark ó dochartaigh

When friends and family say that they want to leave the country now that tRümp and the republicans are in control; my response is that all of us who have lived in the homeland of the American Empire have benefited from the blood, sweat, and tears of people around the world who have provided the goods and services that have given the United States one of the highest living standards in the world. We owe it to the world not to turn and run now that the Empire is going into oligarchical overdrive, but to stay and fight tyranny at its source.

Ryan in New England

Here we go already, Trump and company planning to eliminate NASA funding of Earth sciences to focus on deep space exploration…because now we are guaranteeing that Earth won’t be habitable in a few generations.

Abel Adamski

What were they saying about clinton.
A data mining company that helped Donald Trump win the presidency is in early talks to snare two potentially lucrative new contracts, one to boost the incoming Trump White House’s policy messaging and the other to help the Trump Organization expand its sales, the Guardian has learned.
Cambridge Analytica, a data company that uses personality profiling and boasts billionaire Trump backer Robert Mercer as a key investor, is in discussions about potential deals with the Trump Organization and Steve Bannon, the CEO of the campaign and now Trump’s senior counselor and chief strategist, according to a conservative digital strategist familiar with Cambridge. Despite his apparent role in the talks as a representative of Trump’s incoming White House team, Bannon is also on the board of Cambridge Analytica, the source said, an assertion also reported elsewhere. The talks with the Trump Organization and Bannon underscore the rising influence of the reclusive Mercers as mega-donors on the right, and their tight ties to Trump’s inner circle. Rebekah Mercer, who oversees much of the family’s political philanthropy, is on the 16-person Trump transition executive committee.

Andy_in_SD

If you look at the rainfall for sabesp (Brazil) compared to historical, it is lower. Even though the main reservoirs are decent for capacity, you can see the rainfall deficit. The trend is there. They will not get hit as hard and as soon as the Pacific coast of the Andes simply due to a larger drainage area. You can see the numbers here:

We only got a respite because of the El Niño (there were record rains in June) and that allowed the reservoirs to recover somewhat. But the root causes of the drought, climate change, deforestation of the Amazon (which destroys the atmosphery rivers that keep Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais and São Paulo as areas of lush vegetation, instead of part of the desertic ring like Kalahari), deforestation and pollution of local rivers and overpopulation… none of those have been solved.

Actually, overpopulation is the problem being closest to be solved, as birth rates fell enough for the population of São Paulo to have plateued… and when overpopulation is the one problem that´s closest to solution, that´s a clear sign that nothing is really being done to solve the other problems.

Climate change… well…

Deforestation of the Amazon? Got worse recently, and it´s going to be a battle uphill to lower it. Maybe even a worst battle than inicially though. Sarney Filho, the politician that´s now Environmental Minister in Brasil is being targeted by the ruralist parliamentarians because he´s being too competent (and so, hurting big-agribusinness). The ruralists want his head, and Aldo Rebelo, a ruralist puppet (responsible for the “new Forest Code” that gave indemnity to deforestation before 2008, and other absurds) in his place. I hope (and will campaign for) that Sarney Filho keeps his job, but if Aldo Rebelo is placed in the Environment Ministery, well, expect deforestation rates to double in Brasil.

Deforestation and pollution of local rivers… (https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=desastre+da+samarco&FORM=HDRSC2 ). Rio Doce was heavily used for water in Minas Gerais. Water is being diverted from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro for Minas because of that. The reforestation program that São Paulo´s governor, Geraldo Alckmin, promised, had started well, but is now almost forgotten. Two million trees have been planted, which is good, but far less than the 6 million promised, and a ridiculous figure when confronted with the 30 million trees needed to protect all riparian areas of the Cantareira, as calculated by EMBRAPA.

The added warmth already creates a state where rainfall amounts need to increase to prevent increasing drought stress. Add rapid deforestation to the mix and it’s fast-acting combo that acts as a multiplier for an already difficult problem.

Umbrios’s assessment here provides an excellent example of how policy is so critical to facing down the problem of harmful resource exploitation. It’s where the main battleground lies. Without it, you basically have to put vigilante/protest bodies on the ground or have some major action from powerful NGOs. Internal policy is far more effective, though.

Abel Adamski

The richest 1% will collect 47% of all the tax cuts – an average saving of $214,000.

The 0.1% – the 117,000 households with incomes of more than $3.7m – would receive an average 2017 tax cut of $1.3m, a nearly 19% drop in tax they were due to pay in 2016. The tax savings of the super-rich will increase further in future, with the 0.1%’s estimated 2025 tax bill to fall by $1.5m.

The inequality problem will be exacerbated by Trump’s plan to scrap inheritance tax – which he refers to as “the death tax”. The 40% inheritance tax is currently only charged on personal estate worth more than $5.45m and joint estates of $10.9m – sums so large that it only affects less than two in 1,000 Americans.

Trump has proposed repealing the tax entirely. While Clinton, pushed by Bernie Sanders’ strong stance on the issue, had suggested lowering the threshold to $3.5m and increasing the rate to 65% for the super-wealthy.

“It’s hard to think of a tax change that will have a more detrimental effect on inequality,” Garnder said. “There is no question that this will lead to a perpetual income elite – hardly the thing that Trump voters would have wanted. This will lead to a new era of dynastic wealth.”

Minority families are set to suffer disproportionately from the tax increases, according to Batchelder. With 32% of African American families facing a tax increase compared with 19% of whites, this is mostly due to African American families being more likely to share the burden of childcare within the family and hence not benefit as much from Trump childcare credits. Batchelder said the effective tax increase for many millions of families would run into the thousands.

While the poor will face tax increases, the Tax Policy Center research said the rich would received big tax cuts that get even bigger as you work up the income scale. The top 20% of earners would receive an average annual tax cut of $16,660 compared with an overall average cut of $2,940.

Tax the poor, give money to the rich. That’s been the GOP’s stance since the 80s. The Trump plan is yet one more push back toward 20s era economic policies that would eliminate safety nets and risk mass unemployment on a scale that would make the great recession seem paltry by comparison in the event of a more likely collapse.

Jay M

Kind of obscure, but Bolivia and the Andean region is the center of potato diversity and the original cultivars of the crop. Just speculating, but drying out the region will be bad from this aspect, as well.

Syd Bridges

Thank you for keeping us up to date on this aspect of the Chinese Hoax, Robert. How do you think they did it? Perhaps they’ve covered the glaciers with brown plastic to hide all that snow and ice that they are hoarding. Couple that with a secret plan by Nestle to bottle all of Lakes Titicaca and Poope and it’s easy to see through this Librul scam.

Global warming is now threatening a number of countries, yet those most responsible double down on the damage and deny that they are doing it. They suppress the data that shows their crimes. All this in a country which claims to be Christian.

Abel Adamski

Actually it is a perfect fit for the biblical description of the New Babylon, even down to the statue of Liberty, a statue of the Roman Goddess Libertaria, whom the Romans purloined from the Greeks who purloined the Goddess from the Egyptians who knew her as ISIS. Note in the temple of Isis sins were expiated by having sex with the priests or priestesses and making a cash donation, so the first major organised prostitution organisation, thus the whore of Babylon. In front of the New York Stock exchange you have the statue of the Bull and Bear. Religious symbols of the pagan Middle east and Nordic tribes.
So to say the USA is a Christian Country , that is but a meme.

A little OP I Know, but one relevant at this time in history.

P.S the religious end of the world people are saying Obama is president 44 and the bible states that is the last President and the King of the US will launch an attack against the king of the North (Russia) so they are claiming Obama will start the final war or Trump will be assasinated. They fail to understand the Bible in that regard, the President is one elected by the people in a Democracy or even a Democratic Republic, this election has been characterised by voter suppression and electoral fraud and a campaign unprecedented for the lies and distortion, so it would be a fair comment to say that with the now to be guaranteed perversion of voter rights under the Republican absolute control of all areas of government a valid election is not in the future, so in the sense of the biblical context Trump is not considered president nor will his successors be, rather King, Ruler or Emperor.

That is why each of us must fight for the planet and all life on it, our eternity depends on it

lesliegraham1

Obama is actually only the 43rd President – Trump is the 44th.
This is because one past president – Grover Cleveland – is counted twice. It is the 44th office of the President but only the 43rd man. So maybe that makes Trump the guy about to declare war on ‘the king of the North’ (Trudeau?) and take their lands as the US becomes uninhabitable through drought?
Completely ridiculous of course as we know the current Californian Mega-drought is a Chinese hoax,
Interesting times.

I wonder how those “profecys” even start. When the Bible was written, those writers didn´t knew about the existence of the continent of America. There wasn´t an United States of America. There wasn´t even an concept of “president”. All right, all right, if one´s a Christian then the true writer of the Bible is an All Knowing God, so He could known about those things… but… no presidents in the Bible, anyway…

Tigertown

Meanwhile,wherever there is not drought, it is flooding all over the world, and the mainstream media is not covering it. The Dominican Republic has been flooding all month. Just in the last week alone there has been flooding in Panama and Costa Rica, Italy, New Caledonia Island( close to Australia), and in the U.K. from the storm Angus. If I went back a whole month, it would take too much space.
See for yourself at:http://floodlist.com/news

Genomik

Georges Monbiot sees a similar dystopia to
Me.
Exactly what I’ve been thinking having been going to future salons for 20 years. This is our likely future and trump is doubling down on it. It doesn’t need to end like this but it probably will.

So we should be very clear that, unless something is done to actively redistribute the wealth produced by machine labor, inequality will tend to grow and expand — hitting never before seen levels. The new ‘haves’ will retain access to information labor, mechanized labor, and AI labor. These are absolutely replacing human workers and unless this systemic and growing inequality is address by producing policies, then there will be conflict, unrest, and probably war. In addition, climate change serves to destroy wealth in general. So you have a wealth destroying process combining with a wealth concentration process that is, from the view of someone that looks at how systemic inequalities produce increasing levels of conflict, the absolute worst of both worlds.

Abel Adamski

And from the Inquisitor version , mainly about the change.org petition for an investigation over interference and vote tampering

Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential Election — and month before the Electoral College is set to vote, making the results permanent — a new movement wants to audit the November 8 vote, to investigate whether Trump won the election fair and square, or whether error and even fraud may have placed him in the White House.

One element of the vote audit movement is a Change.org online petition calling for election officials to “double-check the electronic results by conducting a ‘risk-limiting’ audit of the presidential election in every state that uses paper ballots.”

Even a United States Senator, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, has called for a congressional investigation into possible election tampering, particularly by Russian intelligence agencies.

Cate

Hilary

OK, I’ve just found this, here was Guy McPherson on TV3 in NZ tonight:http://www.newshub.co.nz/world/humans-dont-have-10-years-left-thanks-to-climate-change—scientist-2016112408
Is he always like this? I usually avoid reading his stuff, maybe it’s just my head in the sand attitude to the fore?
But I dont find this helpful at all! Seems he gets more publicity that our top climate scientists.
My work colleagues will be ignoring my quiet placing of the occasional but highly relevant articles in the tea room even more now & continue their 3-4 times a year overseas holidays to distant shores etc etc without a qualm!

McPherson is a demagogue… The scientists are cautious because they are afraid of sending the wrong signal to the public and causing more problems than they solve. It’s tough to communicate about risk in a way that people can readily understand and effectively respond to. McPherson is exploiting a problematic situation for personal gain. He provides no positive message and zero leadership. No call to action. He is a problem multiplier and the message here is completely unhelpful.

Cate

CBC TV’s “The National” flagship nightly news program featured a story on the warming Arctic last night. The report went into great detail on what was happening now and what might happen in the future, mentioning once in passing the phrase “human climate change” —yep. In the link below to the web version of the story, “climate change” doesn’t even make an appearance.

So this is coverage which is completely devoid of context. It’s as if viewers are left to connect the dots, draw their own conclusions—read between the lines. This is how you would report something when you don’t want to, or are not allowed to. When there’s an elephant in the room.

I’m not sure which it is, in the case of Canada’s national broadcaster, but after watching their reporting on climate change for some time, I can’t help suspecting some kind of editorial censorship is in play here.

Abel Adamski

I know the Chinese have their super capacitor powered buses with a range of 5Km that charge in 8 Sec at the bus stop.
However it appears there has been a breakthrough that is being touted for smart phones, charde in Secs and twice the capacity and 20 times the lifespan

The new battery is a small, thin piece of metal that could also be used in electric vehicles and wearables, such as smart watches.

It can be charged more than 30,000 times, outlasting current lithium ion phone batteries, which have a lifespan of between 300 and 500 charges, Battery University in Canada says.

The UCF researchers say that lithium-ion batteries typically will not last beyond 1500 charges.

Lithium-ion batteries are known to degrade after about 18 months, lasting for shorter periods with each recharge.

“If they were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week,” Professor Nitin Choudhary, one of the researchers, told the Telegraph in London.

John McCormick

With regard to sensationalism and fatalism, readers of Robert’s blog will admit the truth about our time remaining. This is hard to cary oround in my head and sharing it with you brings some short relief.

Nov 17, 2016 CO2 increased 4 ppm over 2015. A La Nina year, under a quiet sun while China and Asia slow energy use and US reduces our emissions. How can there be a 4 ppm increase whereas 1954 to 1955 was .91 pmm? Only explanation is positive feedback from oceans, forests tundra.

A 4 ppm yearly increase from now until today’s newborn will be 40 years old and old enough to have grandchildren. By then, Manual Loa will be measuring an additional 160 ppm pouring into a base concentration of 404 ppm. The grandchildren would be born into a 564 ppm world. Any thoughts on temp increases and all that will go with a constantly warming world.

I believe 10 years is realistic. And that decade will 40 ppm CO2 to 444 ppm CO2 in 2027.

We have to prepare our children for a warmer world and that is our responsibility. That is what parents do. We prepare our children for the future. Where did that stop?

Their should be told the the truth about the first extinction tapping out at about 1,000 ppm CO2 over about 72 centuries while we are going from 280 ppm CO2 to 564 ppm CO2 by 2057, IN 177 YEARS. Then, we have a national intergenerational conversation about preparing our childrena and how we plan to do it.

I am of the first generation to understand the consequences and the last to slow it down. And, I hold all the wealth while our children hold the knowledge of how to achieve a lower carbon future. Bring us together and work through the States to put a price on carbon.

Abel Adamski

2057 fits into the 2050-2060 time frame for the as yet unpublished 1.5 Meters from Pine Island alone that Sec Kerry mentioned and the 2-3 meters from West Antarctica that other researchers have mentioned in briefings to the insurance industry, plus the rest of Antarctica, mountain glaciers and Greenland. That will be leading to insane weather.

Don’t be so confident in those reported plateaus or drops in emissions. They make the assumption that regional Chinese data is spot on. It never has been until revisions are made later. If you want an example, just look at the massive upward revision in coal consumption they made last year. It’s probable that there was some slowdown due to the recession in the manufacturing sector, but now that it’s recovering and the government made moves to cut production, coal prices shot back up on undersupply. Now they’re scrambling to undo some of the cuts. Remember — Chinese statistics are like a fine wine, they get better with age.

Civilization collapse pressure is now low to moderate with spots of high collapse pressure in some regions. It goes to moderate with more widespread spots of high collapse pressure under business as usual fossil fuel burning by the 2020s through 2030s. BAU collapse pressure is high for many societies and civilizations by 2050. Human population collapse risk increase follows large-scale human civilization collapse. But very high numbers of losses are required to find humanity, as a whole, at risk of extinction. Human extinction risk crops up under BAU by around 2080 to 2100 in the sense that humans may represent what we call an endangered species by that time without some pretty extraordinary and difficult to put in place adaptations to the threat posed by climate change.

In all cases, policies that work to husband resources and care for the resource base (the environment), that work to more equally distribute the wealth produced by machine labor, that work to constrain population growth and bend the curve down (women’s equality, abortion/family planning rights), and that work to respond to climate change in both mitigation and adaptation will increase the likelihood for human civilization survival and help to prevent later extinction pressure.

It’s well to note the methodology and the bare presentation of a number, with no context whatsoever.

“Methodology: Historical weather station maximum temperature data was averaged over November 22-28 for the period 1996-2015 to obtain the 2016 baseline. The mean high temperature projections for 2050 and 2100 were derived from a suite of 28 climate models (CMIP5 / Oak Ridge National Laboratory) under IPCC emissions scenario RCP8.5, averaged over November 22-28 for 2030-2049 and 2080-2099, respectively.”

John McCormick

June

Barbara Kingsolver, the author, has an excellent opinion piece in the Guardian today. It’s a kind of call to arms…polite opposition will not accomplish anything in this new reality. All hands are needed on deck.

The previous article she links to, about rules for conduct in an autocracy, is also very good.

This one led me to sign the MoveOn petition titled “Register Me First,” in which signers pledge to register as Muslims if Trump does follow through on his proposal to require Muslims in the U.S. to register with the government. Gessen’s article made it a simple choice–it’s morally right, so no need to dither about whether it’s really needed or what Trump’s response might be.

Genomik

I read a lot of excellent climate articles on The Guardian and was just reading one and they asked for Guardian Supporters at $69 so I became one! I joined as I think a problem these days is that we rely on free news while the Koch Bros and the right fund their propaganda handsomely.
The Guardian publishes excellent analysis and is widely read. Probably the best publisher, after Robert scribbler who I also donated to.

The left and the planet is at war with the rights propaganda and destruction of the world so a few bucks can go a long way.

Medea Benjamin of Code Pink in North Dakota/Standing rock.serving Thanksgiving dinners to the protectors .http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/deconstructing_thanksgiving_with_standing_rock_20161123
It is with a heavy heart that I (Medea)travel to Standing Rock to give thanks and serve meals to the water protectors who, in the freezing weather, have braved attack dogs, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, percussion grenades and other forms of state-sanctioned violence. This Thanksgiving comes on the heels of a particularly heart-wrenching day, Nov. 21, when over 150 activists were injured, receiving treatment for hypothermia, contamination by tear gas, and traumas from rubber bullets. One activist, 21-year-old Sophia Wilansky, will spend the holiday undergoing a third surgery on her shattered arm that was ripped apart by an exploding concussion grenade.

The campaign also noted that in addition to filing fees, there were attorney’s fees and costs of conducting a statewide recount in all three states that would put the estimated cost at a total of $US6–7 million”

Wow what a strange system that makes a candidate pay for a recount!!!
Is there merit to the rumours of hacking in these states??

This is good news. Now there’s an outside chance that Jill Stein may actually help get Hillary elected, which would be a great twist of fate. However, it also appears that Trump is blowing all sorts of smoke over the prospect. Either he is in full-on freak out mode, or he’s just trying to distract from the other numerous issues surrounding his transition. Between the most terrible cabinet ever and the most terrible congress ever, there’s a lot to distract from.

One intelligent man named George Carlin once said: It’s a private club and you aren’t invited.

Third party candidates? They are always called ‘spoilers’ by the two party system who are funded by the same corporations and wealthy individuals in an violently capitalist society (hence DAPL in North Dakota).

Of course those foolish enough to think they matter have to pay for recounts. Unlike the Republicans & Democrats, those shut-out candidates aren’t getting corporate money to do it, either.

Link is more than you ever wanted to know about the completely corrupt USA ‘elections’ for at least since the privately-owned ‘voting’ computers were installed. Hanging chads were bad enough… Been reading this site since they opened.

Matt

Thanks Seal
Will have a read over and hope to improve my ignorance of the US electoral system!
A quick question(s) though…
1. Is the re-count conducted in the same manner (i.e. the manner in which there is rigging speculation) or are all the votes hand counted?
2. If found to be in error in these 3 states does that mean it will automatically adjust the electoral college total, or will it end up in the courts?

I’d be careful and not get too conspiratorial. The two party system has its flaws. But they are often overblown in these kinds of arguments. One of the issues with false equivalency is that the underlying goal is to undermine faith in US government. This is a primary communication aim by corporatists and conservatives and, at this point, apparently the Russian government.

With regards to US elections, the primary issues are 1 media coverage, 2 voter suppression by conservative states, 3 bicameral control of candidate production, 4 apparent active vote purges in some conservative states, 5 and the vulnerability of electronic voting machines to producing various errors or possibly being manipulated (no internet connection requires local manipulation), 6 voter intimidation.

The fact that we do not have a parliamentary system that is more inclusive of outsiders means that greens, for example, often have to work within the two party system to influence policy results. But it also prevents, say, the KKK from actually having a political party in this country.

godfrey street

I think that Guy Mcpherson is probably closer to a neutral assessment of current reality than not. I wish he wasn’t.

As the years go by the ‘expert’ predictions are worsening in the magnitude of consequences and shortening in time scale. I don’t like this one little bit and does not bear thinking about for the young people especially and parents with children…but it does seem most accurate. What is certain is that the world system is degrading day by day and will reach a point where it becomes even more dysfunctional much sooner than generally spoken of and we will all then face a much bleaker reality…as many of our fellow earth inhabitants are now.

Sometimes I imagine the earth as a small place so I can think of it as a closed system more readily and consider the increasing arctic ice loss, floods / droughts / temperature changes / wind & ocean current changes/ potable water loss / increasing human population/ the wildlife die- off etc etc (here in UK I rarely see birds despite walking by wooded streams) + all the many people suffering from climate/weather driven changes now.

Remembering back to my childhood in a farming village in the 1960’s and the enormous deleterious changes happening now that we would have found unthinkable then and how these are impacting crop production.

The question for me is ‘how to live humanely, help all those I can, face what’s coming in a comradely way and act to preserve what is possible for the life that survives + develop the emotional and cognitive resources to manage coming events with the maximum humanity.

Tom

Fractal Planet is bullshit. McPherson’s been correctly connecting the scientific dots for a long while now and is correct in his conclusion. Nobody wants the show to end, especially when it’s OUR MOVIE, but it will because the way we live is killing off the biosphere. All we’re doing is documenting our demise. Enjoy your time.

anthropocene

Most of the discussion on this blog is grounded in scientific reality. There are more than enough concerns and bad predictions to fill many posts and hundreds of comments to need to resort to exaggerate and extrapolate predictions beyond what science is telling us. I’ve read the Fractal Planet article linked to above. Can’t find anything to dispute in it – and trust me I tried. When you state that a blog post is “bullshit” it’s the least that you could do to provide some evidence to support that claim. I could go through each argument in turn but why should I – I will struggle to put it better than the fractal planet post. I will only add the questions: If McPherson is right (he isn’t) then how does it help us? How much damage to the struggle of solving the climate change issue could McPherson’s point of view cause? (Clue: It doesn’t help) And how much does continuing to peddle this nonsense help McPherson?

Guy McPherson gets pretty much everything wrong — from timetable to the actual, very real need for responses. Doomerism is just another form of climate change denial in that it actively denies the need for responses.

To say this another way, even if worst case warming scenarios with regards to feedbacks do emerge, all it does, from the human standpoint, is make rapid responses to climate change all the more urgent and necessary. If that does happen, the narrative should never be ‘Guy McPherson was right.’ I identified these risks long before McPherson began spinning them into his doomer tale. Guy McPherson has never supported a response. And so he will never be proven right.

Meljay14

Hi Robert, I have only recently discovered your blog, but am finding it so valuable and helpful. There are so few people I can talk to about what is happening and what lies ahead, and who share my sense of grief, anger and fear, as well as my belief in the importance of hope and action and valuing what we still have. Compared to the ugliness of most internet comment sections, this one is so courteous and warm. Thank you to everyone who contributes. I shall be visiting often, if posting only rarely.

Cate

Recently, a family member asked if it would be a good idea to buy a vacation retirement home in Hatteras. My response was, only if you were absolutely certain that the money used was OK to effectively just throw in the trash…

I think our focus should be on actively resisting Trump’s policies that are already pretty much doomed to failure rather than hoping without hope. If we achieve a Trump reversal, in other words, it will be through active resistance.

Shawn Redmond

Instead of a warming between 2.6 and 4.8 degrees C by 2100, Friedrich et al. predict that the range could be between 4.78C and 7.36C by 2100. In the meantime, despite already obviously real global climate change, global emissions are still on the increase. Donald Trump has said that the United States will exit the Paris COP21 Agreement.

Michael Mann, of Penn State University, who led research that produced the famous “hockey stick” graph showing how humans were dramatically increasing the Earth’s temperature, told The Independent the Friedrich paper appears “sound and the conclusions quite defensible”. “(I)t does indeed provide support for the notion that a Donald Trump presidency could be game over for the climate,” Mann writes (see here). This is also the reason why, last week, Noam Chomsky called the Republican Party “the biggest terrorist organisation on the face of planet.” It may well be true that the GOP wins first prize, but it has to be said that the competition is stiff. It is more than simplistic – and perhaps disingenuous as well – to single out the GOP……
Let’s stop talking about predictions for a moment and see what is happening right now. There is no longer any doubt that 2016 is going to be hottest year on record. But in one region — the Arctic — the rate of heat accumulation has been outrageously extreme. It is there that this new record warmth inflicts some of the worst damage to an increasingly fragile Earth System. For in the Arctic Ocean above the 80 degree north latitude line which encircles the crest of our world, temperatures today are around 17 degrees Celsius above average (see here). These are the warmest temperatures for this region that have ever been recorded. They include numerous locations in which temperatures spike to well above 20 C warmer than average. And, as Robert Scribbler notes, this is nothing new either. Readings have remained consistently high throughout autumn. They have levitated off the baseline 1958-2002 average range for the better part of 80 days. As temperatures maintained near late summer or early fall averages, the departure from normal has continued to intensify throughout November (see here).

Shawn Redmond

Cate

Dr David Barber at the U of Manitoba in Winnipeg is a self-described “Arctic guy” and one of Canada’s leading polar researchers, if not the world’s. He’s also an engaging and accessible teachers, as is clear from this TED talk on the “Seven surprising results of the reduction of Arctic sea ice cover.”

He explains some points more clearly than I’ve seen anywhere, for example, why increased snowfall is not good for sea ice. Have a look. From Nov 2014 but still very very timely.

Cate

New report out from the Arctic Council– and it’s grim. 19 tipping points at risk in the Arctic. Effects would be global.

I’ll put the direct link in a reply post.

“Arctic scientists have warned that the increasingly rapid melting of the ice cap risks triggering 19 “tipping points” in the region that could have catastrophic consequences around the globe.
In the Arctic, the tipping points identified in the new report, published on Friday, include: growth in vegetation on tundra, which replaces reflective snow and ice with darker vegetation, thus absorbing more heat; higher releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the tundra as it warms; shifts in snow distribution that warm the ocean, resulting in altered climate patterns as far away as Asia, where the monsoon could be effected; and the collapse of some key Arctic fisheries, with knock-on effects on ocean ecosystems around the globe.”

On Trump’s intention to cut NASA climate research, the lead author said,

“That would be a huge mistake,” said Carson, noting that much more research needs to be done on polar tipping points before we can understand the true dangers, let alone hope to tackle them. “It would be like ripping out the aeroplane’s cockpit instruments while you are in mid-flight.”

Cate

Wheat—the basis of “the staff of life” and yes, there are still billions of us who cheerfully eat our daily bread—can’t keep up with the growing heat.

“The world population continues to grow and the standard of living continues improving. These two factors result in an increasing demand for food production. However, due to global warming we run the risk that food production decreases. Wheat is one of the world’s most important food crops and we face an important problem if yields fall concurrently with an increasing demand.”

For many people, climate change still seems to be a curiosity, almost an academic interest with no relevance to their daily lives. This attitude will change drastically as food supply issues bring home the reality and the peril of what we are facing.

Before the Holiday Feast: New Data on Pesticides in Food Raises Safety Questions
11/23/2016
Carey Gillam Veteran journalist; Research Director for U.S. Right to Know, a non-profit consumer education group

As American gather their families to share a Thanksgiving meal this week, new government data offers a potentially unappetizing assessment of the U.S. food supply: Residues of many types of insecticides, fungicides and weed killing chemicals have been found in roughly 85 percent of thousands of foods tested.

Data released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows varying levels of pesticide residues in everything from mushrooms to potatoes and grapes to green beans. One sample of strawberries contained residues of 20 pesticides, according to the “Pesticide Data Program” (PDP) report issued this month by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service. The report is the 25th annual such compilation of residue data for the agency, and covered sampling the USDA did in 2015

Notably, the agency said only 15 percent of the 10,187 samples tested were free from any detectable pesticide residues. That’s a marked difference from 2014, when the USDA found that over 41 percent of samples were “clean” or showed no detectable pesticide residues. Prior years also showed roughly 40-50 percent of samples as free of detectable residues, according to USDA data. The USDA said it is not “statistically valid” to compare one year to others, however, because the mix of food sampled changes each year. Still the data shows that 2015 was similar to the years prior in that fresh and processed fruits and vegetables made up the bulk of the foods tested.

Though it might sound distasteful, the pesticide residues are nothing for people to worry about, according to the USDA. The agency said “residues found in agricultural products sampled are at levels that do not pose risk to consumers’ health and are safe…”

But some scientists say there is little to no data to back up that claim. Regulators do not have sufficient comprehensive research regarding how regular, repeated consumption of residues of multiple types of pesticides impact human health over the long term, and government assurances of safety are simply false, say some scientists.

“We don’t know if you eat an apple that has multiple residues every day what will be the consequences 20 years down the road,” said Chensheng Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology at the Harvard School of Public Health. “They want to assure everybody that this is safe but the science is quite inadequate. This is a big issue.”

The USDA said in its latest report that 441 of the samples it found were considered worrisome as “presumptive tolerance violations,” because the residues found either exceeded what is set as safe by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or they were found in foods that are not expected to contain the pesticide residues at all and for which there is no legal tolerance level. Those samples contained residues of 496 different pesticides, the USDA said.

Spinach, strawberries, grapes, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and watermelon were among the foods found with illegal pesticide residue levels. Even residues of chemicals long banned in the United States were found, including residues of DDT or its metabolites found in spinach and potatoes. DDT was banned in 1972 because of health and environmental concerns about the insecticide.

Absent from the USDA data was any information on glyphosate residues, even though glyphosate has long been the most widely used herbicide in the world and is commonly sprayed directly on many crops, including corn, soy, wheat, and oats. It is the key ingredient in Monsanto Co.’s branded Roundup herbicide, and was declared a probable human carcinogen last year by a team of international cancer scientists working with the World Health Organization. But Monsanto has said glyphosate residues on food are safe. The company asked the EPA to raise tolerance levels for glyphosate on several foods in 2013 and the EPA did so.

The Food and Drug Administration also annually samples foods for residues of pesticides. New documents obtained from the FDA show illegal levels of two types of insecticides – propargite, used to kill mites, and flonicamid, usually aimed at killing aphids and whiteflies – were recently found in honey. Government documents also show that DEET, a common insect repellant, was recently detected by regulators in honey, and the herbicide acetochlor was found on mushrooms.

FDA scientists also reported illegally high levels of the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam found in rice, according to information from the agency. Syngenta has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to allow for higher residues of thiamethoxam permitted in numerous crops because the company wants it to have expanded use as a leaf spray. That request with EPA is still pending, according to an agency spokeswoman.

The most recent public residue report issued by the FDA shows that violation rates for pesticide residues have been climbing in recent years. Residue violations in domestic food samples totaled 2.8 percent for the year 2013; double the rate seen in 2009. Violations totaled 12.6 percent for imported foods in 2013, up from 4 percent in 2009.

Like the USDA, the FDA has skipped glyphosate in decades of testing for pesticide residues. But the agency did launch a “special assignment” this year to determine what levels of glyphosate might be showing up in a small group of foods. An FDA chemist reported finding glyphosate residues in honey and several oatmeal products, including baby food.

Private testing data released this month also reported the presence of glyphosate residues in Cheerios cereal, Oreo cookies and a variety of other popular packaged foods.

QUESTIONS ON CUMULATIVE IMPACTS
Whether or not consumers should worry about food containing pesticide residues is a matter of ongoing dispute. The trio of federal agencies involved in pesticide residue issues all point to what they refer to as “maximum residue limits” (MRLs), or “tolerances,” as benchmarks for safety. The EPA uses data supplied by the agrichemical industry to help determine where MRLs should be set for each pesticide and each crop the pesticides are expected to be used with.

As long as most of foods sampled show pesticide residues in food below the MRLs, there is no reason to worry, the USDA maintains. “The reporting of residues present at levels below the established tolerance serves to ensure and verify the safety of the Nation’s food supply,” the 2015 residue report states. The agrichemical industry offers even broader assurances, saying there is nothing to fear from consuming residues of the chemicals it sells farmers for use in food production, even if they exceed legal tolerances.

But many scientists say the tolerances are designed to protect the pesticide users more than consumers. Tolerances vary widely depending upon the pesticide and the crop. The tolerance for the insecticide chlorpyrifos on an apple, for instance, is very different than the amount of chlorpyrifos allowed on citrus fruits, or on a banana or in milk, according to government tolerance data.

In the case of chlorpyrifos, the EPA has actually said it wants to revoke all food tolerances because studies have linked the chemical to brain damage in children. Though the agency has long considered residues of chlorpyrifos safe, now the agency says, they may not be.

The “EPA cannot, at this time, determine that aggregate exposure to residues of chlorpyrifos, including all anticipated dietary exposures and all other non-occupational exposures for which there is reliable information, are safe,” the EPA said last year. Dow AgroSciences, which developed chlorpyrifos in the 1960s, is protesting the EPA efforts, arguing chlorpyrifos is a “critical tool” for farmers. In the latest USDA residue report, chlorpyrifos was found in peaches, apples, spinach, strawberries, nectarines and other foods, though not at levels considered to violate tolerances.

The EPA defends its work with tolerances, and says it has been complying with the Food Quality Protection Act that requires the EPA to consider the cumulative effects of residues of substances “that have a common mechanism of toxicity.” The agency says to set a tolerance for a pesticide, it looks at studies submitted by pesticide companies to identify possible harmful effects the chemical could have on humans, the amount of the chemical likely to remain in or on food and other possible exposures to the same chemical.

But critics say that is not good enough – assessments must consider more realistic scenarios that take into account the broader cumulative impacts of many different types of pesticide residues to determine how safe it is to consume the mixtures seen in a daily diet, they say. Given that several pesticides commonly used in food production have been linked to disease, declines in cognitive performance, developmental disorders, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children, there is an urgent need for more in-depth analysis of these cumulative impacts, according to many scientists. They point to the National Research Council’s declaration years ago that “dietary intake represents the major source of pesticide exposure for infants and children, and the dietary exposure may account for the increased pesticide-related health risks in children compared with adults.”

“With the ubiquitous exposure to chemical mixtures, assurances of safety based on lists of individual toxicity thresholds can be quite misleading,” said Lorrin Pang, an endocrinologist with the Hawaii Department of Health and a former advisor to the World Health Organization.

Tracey Woodruff, a former EPA senior scientist and policy advisor who specializes in environmental pollutants and child health, said there is a clear need for more research. Woodruff directs the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

“This is not a trivial matter,” she said. “The whole idea of looking at cumulative exposures is a hot topic with scientists. Evaluating individual tolerances as if they occur in solo is not an accurate reflection of what we know – people are exposed to multiple chemicals at the same time and the current approaches do not scientifically account for that.”

Critics say scrutiny of pesticide safety is likely to only soften given President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to name Myron Ebell to oversee transition efforts at the EPA. Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is a staunch advocate of pesticides and their safety.

“Pesticide levels rarely, if ever, approach unsafe levels. Even when activists cry wolf because residues exceed federal limits that does not mean the products are not safe,” states the SAFEChemicalPolicy.org website Ebell’s group runs. “In fact, residues can be hundreds of times above regulatory limits and still be safe.”

The mixed messages make it hard for consumers to know what to believe about the safety of pesticide residues in food, said Therese Bonanni, a clinical dietitian at Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

“Although the cumulative effect of consuming these toxins over a lifetime is not yet known, short-term data suggests there is certainly a reason to be cautious,” she said. “The message to consumers becomes very confusing.”

Seems odd there’s no mention of possible reasons, like, say, climate change?? I know here in central NY we’re seeing new pest problems, such as the Asian fruit fly that destroys blueberry crops among others, in addition to greater numbers of various pests that were limited by longer, colder winters. I imagine pesticide residue is likely to increase over time…

Dreamer

Enough about McPherson please. He advocates ‘giving up’ the fight against climate change. That leaves people on the same path as the Koch messaging: inaction. By default, uninformed people are ALREADY taking no action, so McPherson’s ‘information lectures’ serve no real purpose anyway, not when the end result is the same as the denialist messaging (take no action … do nothing … carry on with BAU … enjoy yourselves.)

When your message is the same as the Koch’s (regardless of the path you took to get there) it’s time to step off the stage and remain quiet. That’s what’s wrong with McPherson’s message (not to mention his skewing and misrepresentation of the data.)

Even if his pure speculations where to turn out to be true, we should still never give up trying … not until our very last breath. What if the people listening to his message do give up trying (which many of them do) … and his assertions turn out to be wrong? What a disservice that would be to the environment. There’s certainly one way to lose the race, and that’s to give up and pull out of it like he advocates.

McPherson sets a very bad example by advising us to give up. Nobody knows for certain what the future holds, or what the exact timelines will be. His message is a very, very bad one for our earth, and I’m glad to see that many people are finally decoupling from his cause.

Thanks for your blog Robert. You have the right message here … to never give up, no matter how bleak the odds seem to be. You certainly won’t succeed if you stop even trying.

Thank you for this comment, Dreamer, and welcome to the blog. In all honesty, I couldn’t agree more. We need to rally everyone to action at this time. And McPherson’s message of apathy is exactly one of the ways of thinking that got us into this problem in the first place.

The white nationalist and arch-regressive Republican Party is an unpopular political organization in the United States. Thanks to the chasm between its militantly pro-big business and right-wing record and agenda on one hand and the progressive sentiments of most Americans on the other, the Republican Party is viewed unfavorably by 62 percent of the nation’s populace. Just a third of the citizenry holds a favorable view of the “Grand Old Party” (GOP).

And guess what? The Republicans are about to assume control of all three branches of the federal government. They won the U.S. presidency (the executive branch) and retained control of both chambers of Congress (the legislative branch). Donald Trump’s presidential victory means the Supreme Court (the top of the judicial branch) will be tilted to a right-wing 5-4 majority sometime next year, with disastrous consequences.

Republicans—leaders of a party viewed with disapproval by nearly two-thirds of the population—have control of 34 of the nation’s 50 state governor positions, the GOP’s best gubernatorial showing since the 1920s. The Democrats have lost 939 state legislative seats under President Obama. They will control both the governor’s office and legislature in just five states (California, Oregon, Hawaii, Connecticut and Rhode Island). By contrast, the Republicans now hold both the executive and the legislative branch in 25 states.

How do we explain this seeming anomaly? Below I discuss 12 interrelated and overlapping factors behind the strange political dominance of the Republicans in a country that rejects their party.

How did this happen? Three words — misinformation, manipulation, and abuse. In other words, the republican party did everything it could to cheat and to game the system. And these are the fruits of their various deceptive and shady activities. But though these actions have resulted in a return to power, it has not resulted in popularity. Nor will it result in success. Their policies are destined to worsen the problems that are already causing so much unrest. And pretty much every thinking person in this country knows this. The hew and outcry must, therefore, be overwhelming.

3 dead polar bears wash up on a beach in Scotland . And what that means. Get run over like a cross town bus.

Just watch “Good Morning America” , a Disney product, 2 mins of news And it’s off the latest breakdown of some rich jackass. Then we get “deep” reporting.

It’s not fake news, it’s “pop corn news”, empty crap about people who will never stand in line with you at the supermarket. It’s about jiggling the keys it front of the baby. It’s bread and circuses. except the circus in first now.

Kayne West is in the metal ward in LA. Hundreds of hours will be given to him. The drought in Bolivia ………. zip.

coloradobob

There are many great readers at Dr, Roods site and one of the best is Xulonn, here is his latest post , we all need to read it.

91. Xulonn
5:27 PM GMT on November 25, 2016
3 +
This long post is not directly AGW/CC related, but the policies of the incoming U.S. government in Washington, D.C. will affect the the funding and support of climate science severely.

I believe, like many other informed people, that there is a strong likelihood that Trump’s ratings will drop steadily as he fails to deliver on campaign promises. Wasn’t his vote tally less than 1/4 of the “eligible” U.S. voters actually voted for him? And of course, he lost the popular vote by over 2 million.

The American right wing – a corporate funded and run sector – has used hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the finest persuasive propaganda and media techniques money can buy. With the new and very persuasive powers of the internet, they pushed propaganda like the highly successful “Put Hillary the liar in Jail” meme. This Hillary and jail meme is a “huge” obsession with Trump fans, and he will lose support as he abandons this and other campaign promises. Also, Trump is not “draining the Washington DC swamp of insiders and lobbyists” as he promised to do, but rather he expanding the boundaries of that swamp and increasing it’s influence.

Trump cannot “bring the jobs back” because many of them don’t exist. He believes in stiffing workers and not honoring contracts, tries to cheat the unions at his hotels, and is not likely to support increasing the minimum wage requirements. He buys foreign goods instead of buying U.S. made products. Based on such facts, it is illogical – even insane – for people to believe that he would bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. He can’t – and he won’t do these things – but how will his supporters react when he tries to pass the blame for his failures?

More and more semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing and repetitive jobs continue to disappear due to replacement by robotics and automation. There are many people in the U.S. and elsewhere with less than average IQ – after all, and IQ of 100 is “average” and about one-third of the population is between 85 and 115 IQ. (Like population issues, this topic is uncomfortable for many people to discuss.) Many modern technology jobs require higher intelligence and sitting in a cubicle. But even high-tech jobs are not immune to pay degradation. I went from $55/hour as senior desktop support tech for Windows, and senior Novell network administrator in 2000 – to leaving the field when I couldn’t get a job above $12/hr in 2001. (And of course, being 60 y/o and slower and les efficient than the young hot-shot techies didn’t help.)

People of “less than average” intelligence could in the past work at well-paying union and non-union manufacturing jobs, buy nice cars and houses, and live as friends and neighbors of many of the “more intelligent” segments of human societies. In the futurist and utopian novels and books I read in my youth, the “workers” – who did the hard, dangerous and often boring manufacturing jobs – would be replaced by robots and automation – and that is exactly what is happening. The fatal flaw in the reasoning of those futurist writings was that they expected the working class to be freed to pursue art, poetry and other intellectual and cultural pursuits – which requires that the “system” (governments?) would have to provide incomes to the displaced workers, because the wealth would be created by the machines, not the labor of humans.

We all know how that turned out – rather than supporting the displaced workers, the wealth flowed – and continues to flow – into the bank accounts of the uber wealthy – the real “elites.” And while their accumulation of wealth continues to grow, they have managed to deflect the logic and reason about blue-collar job losses towards blaming “trade agreements” and ethnic and racial hatred. The very people who have been duped and robbed of their livelihoods believe that they can and will be rich and successful themselves – if only they work with the Tea Party folks and elect and support the very people who took their jobs away – the corporate interests. This is freaking insane – and I don’t know what can be done about it – especially since the concept of politicians and judges as public servants rather than corporate toadies has been pretty much lost. Do those rare remaining dedicated public servants like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and some of the new incoming Democratic women senators stand a chance of holding back the tide? If their job performance is strong as they oppose the policies and practices of Trump and his incoming administration, will they inspire voters to send them “reinforcements” two years from now in the next election cycle?

I could go on with the details, probably for many, many pages, but I will stop and summarize thusly:

In the past few decades, there have been fundamental changes in the financial, manufacturing, and communication sectors of modern western society. These changes have caused permanent job losses for large numbers of people and the reduction or elimination of reasonable income for this segment. Those people cannot – or will not – face reality and recognize the true causes of manufacturing job losses and the redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy. Plus, human psychology hinders the ability of many to recognize the present and future threats of environmental degradation and AGW/CC.

There have also been incredible advances in science and engineering – including earth sciences such as meteorology and climate science.

With narcissism and greed dominating politics more and more, sacrifice and a reduction in energy and resource use to mitigate AGW/CC and environmental degradation are not popular ideas. Right-wing and nationalist liars are ascending to positions of power in many democracies around the world, leaving those who rely on reason, science, and logic to chart a course into the future with a very difficult task. The legend of Sisyphus has taken on new meaning as I watch the Trump and other nationalists and greedy monsters replace leaders who at least tried to make even a small bit of progress towards dealing with the problems that we humans face. Even if the U.S. turns the politics around a bit in two and four years, the boulders of positive progress are right now rolling back down the hill. (I especially like the “weight” given to the Climate Change boulder)

coloradobob

DroughtMonitor

http://tpu.ru/en/news-events/987/ Here is the link to Prof. Semiletov’s presentation this week. “We have obtained a range of interesting data, but we won’t announce them until scientific papers are published. However, we have proved methane releases are increasing at the shelf. We reached and examined about 20 stations which had been measured earlier and each one showed the releases increasing.”

coloradobob

Cate

By coincidence, here’s something I stumbled across: located somewhere on the Rutgers website, this PDF appears to be a report by or about one Alvia Gaskill wrt a meeting with the DOE (Dept of Environment). The exact context for this short report is unclear.

However, the topic is not. The topic is “Catastrophic Methane Hydrate Release Mitigation” and the paper is quite eye-opening. After discussing various scenarios for catastrophic methane release, It advises that the potential for massive methane release is so great that “emergency mitigation” procedures such as suggested in the paper should be prepared. These procedures seem to involve igniting and burning the methane in various ways.

I suppose we should take comfort from the fact that the US DOE appears to have this on the radar, at least? There is no date on the report, that I can see.

Cate

CH, my guess is that Gaskill may have been asked by the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee of the DOE to present this and to offer some possible geo-engineering solutions? It seems quite preliminary, whatever it is.

Btw, the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee has its own little corner of the DOE website with all sorts of reports and minutes of meetings available to read, for anyone who has the time.

I’ve had similar thoughts about igniting methane if releases become large enough. One idea I had was to equip a solar powered drone (or thousands of them) with lasers so that they could ignite the methane from a distance, and spectrometers to monitor methane releases. It might also be possible to drop tiny flares, just large enough to create a spark. It might also be possible to drop a finely divided catalyst of some sort, to ignite the methane.

The background info on methane hydrates seems pretty solid. I’m not sure that their assertion that slope failure is necessary to release large quantities of methane is correct. This document appears to be maybe a decade or so old. They don’t mention the possibility of release of methane from the melting of subsea permafrost caps, or the possible release of methane from high salt “triple point” methane hydrates. They also don’t mention the methane blowouts like the ones on the Yamal Peninsula.

The DOE should look into this, like the document says, I think. Remote ignition of methane in the atmosphere would not prevent massive methane releases from exhausting the capability of whole oceans to oxidize methane, though, making it more likely that methane would survive the trip to the surface of the ocean.

Cate

Thanks, Hugh, for the reminder on how to find the date. Duh me. I really should know this, right.😀

Thanks, Leland, for the additional background. It did seem to me like an older paper.

In the absence of references, I did wonder where all the numbers on methane came from. I felt this little paper reads more like someone’s summary, rather than the main report. Perhaps it was originally a PPT or something, as slides are mentioned.

The place to catch the methane might be underwater, there are a variety of patents on this, for collection devices that could be positioned above plumes coming from the ocean floor.

If the methane was burned using oxyfuel combustion, a reasonably pure stream of CO2 would result, and electrical power could be generated to pay for the cost of the remediation. The CO2 could be deep injected into basalt layers as supercritical CO2 or as carbonated sea water, as in the Icelandic CarbFix process, ending up as carbonate.

So, almost carbon neutral remediation could be done…on some of it. Catching all the methane would be like trying to catch soup in a net – it would be impossible. Bacterial communities would inevitably oxidize some of it into CO2, adding to ocean acidification and anoxia.

I believe myself that civilization would break down, and we would become unable to sustain such efforts, if large releases occur.

One other idea I had – methane is non-polar, water is polar. So methane does not dissolve well in water, it likes to dissolve in non-polar solvents.

If we were to inject something like a silicone oil in the ocean, it would form a separate phase with the sea water and the methane would be preferentially adsorbed by the oil. The oil could then be collected and subjected to heat or vacuum, to release the methane, and the oil could be recycled. I visualize curtains of drops of oil rising from pipelines through the seawater to collect the methane, collected by tanker ships on the surface.

The ecological effects would likely be horrendous, and civilization would likely break down before we get to this point, I think. This is only the first draft of a wild idea, and a thousand things could go wrong before this becomes a practical process.

Far better to avoid the release of methane from the hydrates in the first place, of course.

Sparging the water with air might work, to remove the methane. Selective permeability membranes or pressure swing adsorption might be able to separate the resulting methane from the sparging air. It might be possible to remove methane from seawater in an ecologically permissible way…or not.

Ok… asking the stupid questions – if the methane was ignited, wouldn’t there be a risk of starting a fire too big to control? The ecossystem there is mostly ice and water, ok, but animals catch fire too (and it isn’t preety).

If chemicals were used to dissolve the methane, given the quantities implied, wouldn’t there be a massive toxic pollution issue?

Would those geoengineering cause more or less damage than the methane going to the atmosphere

I trully don’t known the answer to any of these questions, but I’d feel safer if someone had already answered those before trying things like these.

Igniting the methane would be an extreme measure to prevent a methane catastrophe. So the ecological risks we are willing to take would likely depend on the risk of the methane catastrophe itself. These risks could include extinction of the human species or at any rate deaths of billions of people.

The size of the fires would be limited by the amount of fuel available. Semiletov is reporting methane releases from areas more than a kilometer wide on the Siberian Arctic Shelf, so that might be a really, really big fire. Future methane plumes will likely be larger, maybe tens of kilometers wide. The real problem might be getting low concentrations of methane to burn in air, at all.

On the other hand, heat released by the fire itself would likely be thousands of times less than heat produced by the greenhouse effect before the methane is oxidized into CO2.

If we do this, it will be because we are totally out of options to prevent an extinction event, I think.

The carbon neutral remediation idea in which methane is captured from underwater vents then burned in oxygen to produce an almost pure stream of CO2 and then that CO2 injected into basalt layers could be environmentally OK, though. But it would not be able to capture all the methane, and it would not prevent ocean acidification and anoxia, I think.

Mitigation is always the best option. So pre any actual release, that’s what we should be pushing. Prepared responses are helpful. However, if the narrative shifts to new fossil fuel extraction, that does not help the problem at all.

For mitigation and preparedness, I’m thinking that the methane could be concentrated by aluminized plastic film floating on the ocean surface, fiber reinforced, buoyed with foam buoys. Methane could be channeled to silica foam burners in the buoys. That way, a bigger fraction of the methane could be burned, maybe, because the concentration of methane in air would be high enough to be combustible. One problem is cost: at least a million dollars per square kilometer, I think, and probably much more.

Here’s what Semiletov is saying about his 2016 research voyage to the East Siberian Arctic Shelf:

“We have obtained a range of interesting data, but we won’t announce them until scientific papers are published. However, we have proved methane releases are increasing at the shelf. We reached and examined about 20 stations which had been measured earlier and each one showed the releases increasing. To underline that methane mega releases – with the area of over 1 km – are registered only at the East Siberian Shelf,” said head of the TPU’s Arctic Sea’s Carbon Study International Laboratory, RAS Associate Member Igor Semiletov.”

Plumes over a kilometer wide, Semiletov says, but no mention of the flow rate of methane or the concentration of methane in the air over the plumes, whether that is combustible or not.

coloradobob

Cate

The UN with the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) plans an “early warning network” in the face of global climate deterioration. The hope is that such a network will aid in human adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

“More impact-based weather forecasts and early warning systems will save lives both now and in the years ahead. There is a great need to strengthen the disaster early warning and climate service capabilities, especially of developing countries. This is a powerful way to adapt to climate change.”

coloradobob

coloradobob

Hey, I just made 4 rational, reasonable, restrained replies to global warming deniers on Breitbart News, and got banned, for spamming.

No facts allowed, I guess.

Here’s a sample:

“When I was born, CO2 levels were at about 315 ppm. Now we are above 400 ppm.

In 2014 it was the hottest year on record. Then came 2015, that replaced it as the hottest year on record, globally. Now, according to NASA, it’s looking like 2016 will replace 2015 as the hottest year on record.

According to just about all climate scientists, most of the heat from global warming is going into the oceans. Now we are having a delayed freezing event in the Arctic that has Arctic Sea Ice area the lowest November on record:

coloradobob

I used to try that, they would claim RS bans them. But facts , and fiction have the same weight now, up is down, 2 is greater than 4, plus is minus, the sky is not really blue, Trump will show it’s really red.

Hold on… So people over at Breitbart are saying that science-based global warming comments get banned there because I ban climate change denier comments? Wow, I didn’t realize I’d had such an effect on people who witch hunt scientists and promote white supremacy. Maybe there’s a shot at a small, organized and determined group figuring out how to blowing up the death star after all…😉

So, this paper has a limited amount of low quality data from the “Heroic Age” of Antarctic exploration, which they couple with computer models. They come to the conclusion that the boundaries of the Antarctic sea ice have changed very little in the last century.

Suppose I was to apply this method today, with much better global positioning data, and much more uniform recording methodology. Suppose I was to gather data from 14 voyages over 20 years, and compare that to computer models (I get to pick which models, of course) and claim that from that limited amount of data I could calculate the boundaries of the Antarctic sea ice in limited areas throughout the year.

I think that scientists would question any conclusions I came to from this very limited amount of data. The yearly variation in sea ice extent alone is pretty large, not to mention variations in collection methodology, observer bias, and so on.

coloradobob

My hill 49’North opens tomorrow with a whopping 11″ at the lodge and 16″ on the peak. That’s their official amount but they always lie.

It was 41’F at the lodge and above freezing on top this afternoon on the snow report. At the same time it was 47’F in Chewelah at the base of the hill and raining hard so it was raining hard up above, too, no doubt.

All about the cash flow…like everything else we talk about on this site. That is what is going to kill off our civilization and planet most likely. Nice epitaph?

CB: I literally killed the home tv set in 1993. I just couldn’t take any more of Bill Clinton’s smarmy face spouting his neoliberal lies while signing every pro-corporate business bill that crossed his desk. I mean, he pushed through HW Bush’s NAFTA/GATT as our little snowboard gear company boardwarm.com was just getting off the ground.

An animal gene bank is a guarantee that, in the face of a possible catastrophe (exotic disease outbreaks, fires, floods wars etc), it will be possible to save our animal resources.

Artificial reproduction techniques (ART) can address a number of critical problems encountered with small fragmented populations, such as high levels of inbreeding in captive situations.

Maintaining genetic diversity is a matter of survival. The loss of it results in reduced fitness and fertility in a given species and increased susceptibility to disease or climate change. Hence, a rapid path to extinction.
Under threat

Australia’s Gene Bank and services have now been “on hold” since 2009, when the zoo received its last deposit. Essentially the Centre has gone into hibernation through the loss of funding support and – ironically enough – faces its own form of extinction.

Because there are no longer the staff to process them, we have missed out on what I would imagine are dozens of important gene samples.

In the meantime, Australia continues to lose its native species. Look no further than the potential loss of the Tasmanian Devil.

Can we afford to lose more species? Can we afford to lose the Australian Gene Bank and its collection from more than 100 animal species?

Who is more likely to have an agenda — a scientist who actively chose to enter a career that produces far less income than someone who chose instead to use their considerable intellect to game the system on Wall Street, or a billionaire with ties to the fossil fuel industry?

redskylite

Good reporting (with short informative video) in Australia (Sydney Morning Herald) with Peter Hannam, wouldn’t it be great if more international icons (media outlets) reported things like this and up front, where it catches folks eyes ? Especially when a right wing party called One Nation is trying to pull the wool over voters eyes by showing one pristine & untouched reef, instead of the devastated part.

‘Remarkable year’: What’s behind the record low sea ice in Antarctica

Two thousand and sixteen will certainly go down as a stunning one for polar ice. In the Arctic, sea ice growth in the lead-up to winter stalled at record low levels in November amid temperatures 20 degrees above normal that some commentators described as “insane” and a clarion call of global warming.
With less ice to reflect the sun’s radiation to space, more heat is absorbed by the oceans, added to the warming.

Greg

Commentary within:
“We have no long-term wide geographical ranging measurements of sea ice thickness in the Antarctic that are comparable to what we have in the Arctic,” he said. “For various technical reasons we don’t have [satellite data] – yet – either. ”

It’s worth noting that comparative studies have found that Antarctic sea ice is greatly reduced during the 1980 through 2010 period vs the 1950s through 1970s. It appears that Antarctic sea ice changes in steps and that the current period is one of relative stability. Increasing melt outflow from glaciers and storms is protecting the surface ice. And ice could swing wildly in the future depending on weather, rates of atmospheric carbon accumulation, and rates of glacial outflow.

John McCormick

Robert, the single most important data set is the yearly increase of the rate of CO2 emissions. !959-1960 increase was .91 ppm. Nov. 17, 2016 – Nov 15, 2015 was 4.01 ppm.

This is the first clear signal of positive feedback and it is going unnoticed. We need to take a deep look at what 4 ppm increase means over the next 40 years to 2057. 160 ppm increase to push atmospheric concentration to 564 ppm. That is more than half way to the first extinctions’s peak 1,000+ CO2.

Dave Person

Hi John,
Also during the time interval between 1959-1960 and 2015-16 human population more than doubled, economic activity fueled by fossil fuels increased dramatically. Therefore, the rate of increases in CO2 and CO2e are by no means due only to positive feedbacks. The signals for positive feedbacks are beginning to be detected and measured but it is by no means clear yet that they are contributing strongly to GHG emissions and accumulation in the atmosphere.

redskylite

That’s true Carbon emissions have increased, there is always a lot going on in our Earth systems, that’s why we need supercomputers to try and figure it all out. The recent uptick that we hoped would level out at end of the El Nino seems not to have eased. It is very worrying, the steady 2 ppm annual rise is no more, the near linear calculations may not project enough urgency.

The younger generation seem to have grasped the urgency, maybe education has helped.

redskylite

Most opinion polls seem to indicate the younger the one is the more likely the problem is accepted.

“Carried out earlier this year to coincide with Masdar’s 10-year anniversary, the survey spoke to 5,000 post-millennials in 20 countries across the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.”

Vic

The number of protesters appears to be swelling. How these are organized will be key in determining the protest’s success or failure. It would be helpful for 350.org or another similar organization to provide logistics and training teams for protests that swell as the result of coverage like this one. Having people available to train protesters in non violent resistance techniques and tactics as well as having groups that actively police and remove agitators are of critical importance.

I submit that there hasn’t been anything BUT two sides of the Republican party since the Reagan regime took control of this country. Not if you look at the policies, both foreign and domestic, regardless of which face was in office. Notice that the same neoliberals keep appearing in every administration regardless of which face is on the throne?

One has to go back and read all of the policies of Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton, W Bush, Obama to understand this. Connect the dots, connect the money, connect the power. And you don’t even have to look carefully. It becomes glaringly obvious rather quickly. By actually reading what they all approved during their time in office shows an almost unbroken line on a graph falling off the right side of the chart.

An advantage of there never being a tv turned on in the house is that you don’t hear their slimy lies oozing into your brain corrupting your critical thinking skills. Reading turns on the brain, tv turns it off. Pretty elementary stuff just comparing brain wave patterns between the two. THROW YOUR TV OUT PERMANENTLY!

The so-called Democrats moved so far to the right during Reagan that they represent the ‘old’ Republican issues while the Republicans ran right off the page. The League of Women Voters who hosted the ‘debates’ publicly quit in the mid-80s due to both the DNC/RNC corruption. Didn’t anybody else get that?

DAPL in reality was lost before it started. It was supposed to go by the nearly all-white city of Bismark ND. Can’t have that! Didn’t anybody notice that Obama APPROVED two other fracking pipelines owned by Energy Transfer Partners (owner of DAPL) that will go UNDER the Mexican border to flood Mexico with fracked US gas with the DAPL protests? Anybody else hear about those two pipelines? Nope.

The Art of War says to distract your enemies. Still quite effective. Worked for the XL pipeline, too, because of all the other pipelines that were approved while everybody was all hot and heavy against the XL. DAPL really isn’t all that different than the XL which is almost completed anyway and Trumpette will surely connect the last few miles together.

Jesus ain’t coming to CB’s Hell Breakfast I’m afraid. Neither is Zeus or Isis or Odin or any of the other 1.5 million gods that anthropologists have cataloged over the years. We are on our own and we ain’t doing too good…

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.” -John Adams

Weather: it was 47’F yesterday in the sunshine. My ski hill decided to NOT open because it rained so hard up there on Friday. The local loggers are cutting forest down everywhere around here as fast as they can for the corporations and ‘investment’ firms because that’s all the jobs there are. And to all of you good people here that keep posting horrible links to outrageously scary climate stuff… holy shit, ya know?

The Democratic Party today is the Republican Party of the 60s and 70s. I get that. But there is still a big difference between the two. The current Republican party is basically now the fascist party of the US. And this has been the case increasingly since Reagan threw a big wrench in the progressive path of our nation. We find ourselves in a position where we must move both parties left. And our strategy should be focused on how to do that over a long time-frame while also effectively dealing with very serious crises that have resulted from the failure of this big shift right. It’s a serious challenge. But it’s one that we must undertake.

Cate

John McCormick

I don’t think we can count out a feedback signal at this time. We are pretty well past El Nino and, unless these numbers start dropping soon, it appears we’re looking at some pretty significant reorganizations to the carbon cycle ongoing.

June

Add Arizona to the high solar potential states that are actively trying to destroy the solar industry. It’s irrational, counterproductive and plain immoral (from the point of view of trying to save the planet).

Rooftop Solar Threatened as Arizona’s Biggest Public Utility Takes Over the Commission That Regulates It

Abel Adamski

Jeremy in Wales

and Hinckley Point nuclear power station is directly in the firing line. To be fair while a Tsunami appears to have taken place the actual trigger has not been found and so there is some debate as to whether this was caused by a storm surge – albeit unlike any other storm surge recorded. But having been to the village of Peterstone Wentloog and seen water at a spring tide lapping over the sea wall and seen the floodmark on the church tower it is a scary prospect.
However there are now proposals for a tidal lagoon offshore that in addition to protecting these vunlerable coasts will generate huge amounts of electricity, 3GWhttp://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/cardiff/

Shawn Redmond

Looking at the GIS around May 2016 at 74n there isn’t any sign of melt at this level. I know the areas are completely different but melt caused by heating if anything should be a bit later, no? I don’t seen any ponds of this size on the GIS until well into June, And this one is on the eastern side of the Ross sea! It wasn’t there on the 25th, cloud cover on the 26th and bang there it is on the 27th. I believe that this location is part of the Reeves glacial flow.

Shawn Redmond

Your more than welcome RS and a big thanks to all who post here. I’ve been chasing this thing around all day in the hopes that this is glitch or something. Can’t find anything yet one way or the other. Hoping for a glitch, that’s a lot of water in a short time!

Jeremy in Wales

Apologises if anyone has posted this before (the talk was March 2016) but it seems quite hopeful in suggesting that electricity demand can be reduced and production transition to renewables in a short timescale.
Disruptive energy futures: Dr Amory Lovins

Tom

Seal: yours is the “understanding” an aware being should have. Embrace it and use the awareness to live as the best person you can be “on the way out” – projecting kindness to others and other species we encounter along the way. You grok the situation.

coloradobob

A rift in Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, West Antarctica, photographed from the air during a NASA Operation IceBridge survey flight, Nov. 4, 2016. This rift is the second to form in the center of the ice shelf in the past three years. The first resulted in an iceberg that broke off in 2015. Photo: NASA/Nathan Kurtz

The rift formed at the very base of the ice shelf nearly 20 miles inland in a region where the ice had thinned compared to the surrounding ice shelf.

coloradobob

Pine Island Glacier has undergone several major iceberg calving events over the past decades. These typically occurred when a rift at the heavily fractured shear margin propagated across the width of the ice shelf. This type of calving is common on polar ice shelves, with no clear connection to ocean-ice dynamic forcing. In contrast, we report on the recent development of multiple rifts initiating from basal crevasses in the center of the ice shelf, resulted in calving further upglacier than previously observed. Coincident with rift formation was the sudden disintegration of the ice mélange that filled the northern shear margin, resulting in ice sheet detachment from this margin. Examination of ice velocity suggests that this internal rifting resulted from the combination of a change in ice shelf stress regime caused by disintegration of the mélange and intensified melting within basal crevasses, both of which may be linked to ocean forcing.